New York charter schools, Katrina investigation

A new state Board of Regents report on the charter school movement in New York offers an instructive overview of this innovation in public education. What the report really does, though, is help make the case for a law better than the one hurriedly passed in 1998.

What's needed, when the Legislature reconvenes, is a law that sets up a more streamlined and sensible means of oversight and financing.

Because these schools are supposed models of independence from normal bureaucratic controls, the state's position largely has been to watch and to help the schools when needed, but not to step in forcefully when a school's direction seems decidedly negative. That's too laissez-faire.